foto Priority

Approximately every 8 weeks on the final night of our beginners Digital SLR Workshop, 60+ graduates swallow hard and with a USB key in hand accompanied by a pre prepared disclaimer, allow us to download the fruits of their 8 week technical and creative toil, for all to see on the big screen.

Although scary at first, time and time again the final night presentations prove to be an incredibly rewarding and inspiring experience for all involved, with the quality and diversity of the work never failing to impress. This time was no different, from 1275 images we edited down to 30.

Selecting so few from so many is not an easy task and is definitely not something we take lightly, so just to give you an idea of how the process works here is a quick rundown.

Once the final night presentations are all done and dusted, the resulting images are compiled into a single Lightroom catalogue where any references to the image creator are removed as we put Lightroom in “lights-out” mode ready for the first edit.

With nothing on the screen but the image we run through each one, judging on initial impact, creative content and idea plus overall presentation. Those receiving a single star survive to the next round, where the judging really heats up.

In the second round usually with 300-400 images to look at we start comparing based on set criteria borrowed from the Australian Professional Photography Awards (APPA’s). You might think it as a bit of an overkill but when faced with that many images to compare, one definitely needs some set guidelines to go by.  As we view, review, compare and argue we normally manage to issue 50-60 two star ratings.

The third and final round starts with an elimination by legibility, where we set up a Lightroom view showing us the capture date in the metadata for each of the images,  and eliminate all those created prior to the commencement of the workshop. From there we continue to compare and discuss, usually by similar subject matter, eliminating individual images until there are just the 30 left.

Overall the images are selected based on the following criteria; impact, creativity, subject matter, composition, centre of interest, file quality, lighting, colour balance, story telling, style, and technique. I believe that keeping these in mind when you are out and about creating your images and practicing your photography is a sure fire way to improve.

Congratulations to all those who made the final cut!!!

See the Top 30 HERE

Enjoy!

We really spoilt for choice at the moment with the amount of cool exhibitions coming up in the world of photography. Below is a list of what’s on in and around the eastern states over the next few months.

Head on Photography Festival

Sydney April 29th to June 5th

This inaugural festival is a collection of exhibitions and events in galleries, cafes and restaurants around Sydney showcasing local and international photography. The festival launches with the announcement of the sought after Head On portraiture prize.

View official site View event schedule

AIPP Australian Professional Photography Awards

Melbourne June 3rd to 6th

The Australian Professional Photography Awards (APPAs) recognising the best of the best in Australian photography

View official site

The SMH Photos -1440: A Day a Minute a Moment

Sydney July 3rd – 1st August

The Sydney Morning Herald exhibition will be presented at the State Library of NSW featuring prints and multimedia of the best published and unpublished work by Herald staff from 2009 to today

View official site View exhibitions photos

World Press Photo

Brisbane June 5th to 27th

Sydney July 3rd to 25th

This exhibition showcases the winning images from the professional press photography awards. These images are sure to inspire, move you and show you an enlightening perspective on the world.

View official site

Hi all, creativeLIVE.com is a world wide creative classroom that has only been around a couple of months but by the looks of the site and its content it’s going to be a real winner amongst creative types like us. There are a host courses covering a fairly wide cross section for photographers, from beginner type introductory courses to something more specific like aperture3 or writing java applications.

Each live presentation/webinar is FREE! Yes FREE, you just have to enroll prior to the start time and watch them live, you can even ask questions at Q&A time. The only time you pay for the online course is if you miss it live and you want to watch the recording.

Take a look around yourself, be sure to check out this very cool Photoshop CS5 video, it introduces us to some cool new features and in addition you get a feel of how the classes are run.

Deanna O'Leary - © Linnet Foto/SPW

One of our favorite models Deanna strikes a pose for the group at the ever popular Photographing People Workshop. The location is at Quarantine Reserve,  Abbotsford, also one of our favorites.

2010 Workshop Schedule

© Daniel Linnet (SPW) - Sonia @ Photographing People Workshop, June 2005

One of the first Photographing People Workshops where I demonstrated the location lighting technique, “Night for Day” and shooting into the sun, which even to this day never fail to impress the masses. Ooohs and aaahs all around!

2010 Workshop Schedule

More of Daniel Linnet’s Work

Small Worlds – Preview. from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Last week Daniel and I attended a talk on social media put on by the people at the ACMP. One of the speakers was Keith Loutit, a Sydney based photographer and filmmaker. His recent bathtub series of short films using tilt-shift / time-lapse techniques have attracted a huge amount of interest over the internet, especially on vimeo and youtube where the films have attached 1000’s of viewers. Take a look at some of his videos, I’m sure they’ll blow you away as they did to us!

Keith is holding an exhibition of his work at Customs House Circular Quay in Sydney. Details are below.

Small Worlds: Stills & film from the ‘Bathtub’ &’Small Worlds’ series of short films by Keith Loutit.

Location: Media wall, ground floor customs house & level two library, Customs House 31 Alfred St Sydney NSW 2000

Exhibition dates:  27 April, 2010 to 7 July 2010.

It’s nice to know that someone out there is looking out for the rights of all us photographers, pro or amateur. The Australian Institute of Professional Photography’s (AIPP) “Competition Watchdog” William Long has recently successfully lobbied Australian Tourism to change it’s “Nothing Like Australia” photo contest entry terms which were a blatant disregard for photographer’s rights.

A big thank you to William Long and the AIPP team!

Read the full press release

Enter “Nothing Like Australia” Contest

Join the AIPP

Behind The Scenes - The amazing Bradley Chatfield turns it on for our first ever weekend workshop back in June 2005

I can’t believe that I didn’t think of this earlier! Last night while trolling through the thousands of images taken over the last 5 years worth of workshops, I realised that there are just so many amazing images that have never really been seen, so over the next however many months I’m going to open up the vault and see what pops out. The amazing models, cool locations and the fun we had.

Hope you enjoy seeing them as much as we enjoyed making them.

Link to Sydney Photographic Workshops

I’m very excited about working with Steven from InkedupTV on the creation of a new promo clip for SPW so keep an eye out, it’s coming soon.Without doubt Steven is one creative dude!

Browsing through some of his most recent work I came across this clip which he had just completed. Enjoy!!

NEW EDGAR “OSOK” HOILL VIDEO!!! Steven catches up with leading photographer of Lowrider Magazine! Without a doubt Edgar Hoill has a natural talent of capturing the raw essence of his subjects. “All my stuff is street, so all my stuff is real. And everything that I shoot is either people I know real close or that I work close with or just stuff I see on the streets.”He also has a sick ass collection of tattoos done by some of the best around the world. Jack Rudy, Horiyoshi III, Ben Grillo, Tattoo Tony just to name a few

Courtesy of Steven Guzman at InkedupTV

A huge congratulations to our very own SPW tutor Michael Good who recently entered a work in the Thirroul Seaside Art Festival.  Competing against over 300 other invited artworks and judged by the curator of Wollongong University Art Collection, Michael won the overall, Anita Commelli Prize .

Upon seeing the work I was immediately intrigued by the process that led to it’s creation. As it turns out the process was a collaboration of two great talents and is an alternate slant on the CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) process that seems to dominate today’s photography. I asked Michael to pen a few words about his latest collaborative project.

© Michel Good

“A little over a year ago I had a chance meeting with an amazing artist Arthur Apanski, when I was commissioned to photograph his house being put up for sale.  I found it very difficult to control my enthusiasm, as every wall in this little cottage was filled with a number of Arthur’s amazing artworks.  Of course being the curious type I talked with Arthur for quite some time about his works and what he had in mind for the future.  This led to us coming up with a new challenge that Arthur believes hadn’t been done before.  I was to get some of my landscape photos printed on to large format canvas and then hand it over to Arthur for him to perform his own piece of magic on the works.

To set the context of my trepidation I provide you with two images which easily show Arthur's amazing and very intimidating talent.

Our first projects consisted of two commissioned works.  One of which was for a local builder who wanted a classic Arthur signature piece to hang on his wall.  Not being able to afford one of Arthur’s original works we offered to create an artwork especially for him.  This meant photographing his favourite landscape (East Corrimal Beach) and then handing over to Arthur for his interpretation.  East Corrimal beach is a very classic long sandy beach with small sand dunes.  A very cliche kind of landscape.

Being the first work I was going to produce for Arthur I had little idea as to how it should be photographed.  To add to the mystery I hadn’t met nor spoken with the client.  This gave me free reign over how I chose to photograph the landscape.  Having gone to the location more than a dozen times in varying lighting conditions I felt that I had a good selection to present to Arthur.  I had photographed from many varied angles emphasising many different aspects form large landforms to small detailed driftwoods.  In the end I need not have worried too much as the point of the project was that I would give my own impression of the landscape.  Arthur would then add to it without comment or input from myself.  We wanted to see how the project could work without collaboration.  i.e. I was not to produce works to suit Arthur nor would he try to enhance or compliment the landscape presented.  He would simply interpret the scene and paint accordingly.

Here is the end result of the first commissioned work. Arthur's belief is that Wollongong will be inhabited by great lizards and crocodiles in 50 years due to global warming.

The second commissioned work was for a client who had inherited the family home which would be demolished in the near future and so the theme was to show the existing house being carried away much the same way as the sand dunes come and go…

Our second commission

We have since moved on to our main project which are my selected landscape works to be exhibited in the Wollongong City Gallery in 2011. So far we have produced 8 art works, some of which you can see here. This experience so far has really made me look at landscape and people photography in a whole new light.  Not being content with cliche images the project has forced me to think in a more artistic way and really consider all the elements including composition, colour and textures and of course considered lighting and atmosphere.  This will help my future photography grow to greater heights no doubt.  Being my first exhibited work I’ve now gained a desire to enter more competitions.

© Michael Good

© Michael Good

© Michael Good

© Michael Good

© Michael Good